2002 Dodge Dakota Rear Wheel Drive Front Driver & Passenger Side Outer 2 Piece Tie Rod Set TRQ PSA54788

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In this video, we are going to be working with our 2006 Chrysler 300. We're going to show you how to remove and replace the vehicle's outer tie rod or tie rod end. If you like this video please click subscribe. We have a ton more information on this and many other vehicles. If you need this part for your car, you can follow the link down in the description over to 1AAuto.com. Here are the items you will need for this repair.

Using a 21 millimeter socket and a breaker bar, loosen all of your lug nuts about one turn. Raise and support your vehicle. We are using a lift to make it easier to show you what's going on, but this job can easily be done at home with a jack and jack stand. Remove your lug nuts the rest of the way by hand. Remove your wheel and tire.


Using the 24 millimeter wrench – and we've soaked both our jam nut and the nut on the end of the tie rod in penetrating oil – break the jam nut loose. We don't want to move it too far, just enough that it's off the end of the tie rod.

Using the 21 millimeter socket and a breaker bar, crack the nut on the end of your tie rod loose. Once you get it loose enough you may be able to finish removing it with a socket and ratchet. Now if you are removing and replacing the outer tie rod, you can use a pickle fork here, which sits between the spindle and the ball joint and knocks it out as you tap the fork in. However, that damages the boot rendering the old outer tie rod useless. So, in the interest in saving parts, we're going to use a hammer and hit the side of the spindle with a taper of the ball joint end goes through and release it. Remove your tie rod and count the number of turns it takes to remove it. It was just about 21 turns. We'll want to make sure that we install the new tie rod end that same number of rotations.

Now you'll notice that there's a hex cut on the end of your inner tie rod here, which is actually designed for a wrench to hold it. However, most open end wrenches are fairly weak and with a really stuck nut like we have on the end of our inner tie rod here, it's going to be a lot safer and easier to grab it with a pair of vice grips and spin this off with a 24 millimeter. We'll mark this flat with a paint marker. You could also mark it with a sharp chisel or punch, really anything that's just going to give you an indication of when it reaches the 12:00 position again. Five. Be sure to keep the tie rod itself steady, because this does pivot and can change the number of counts you have on that 12:00 position. Twenty-five, 26, 27, 28. It's about 28.

Here we have our old tie rod end, which we removed from our vehicle and our new part from 1AAuto.com. As you can see there are some minor aesthetic differences such as where the square channel is here for you to remove this with a wrench if it were to be stuck on while you were trying to get off your inner tie rod, as well as having a grease fitting on this so you can service this and keep it greased, lubricated and in good shape for longer. They have the same tapered end and threads as well as a new nylon lock nut for our new part. The boots do look different, but this has been bolted down and collapsed and been on there for almost 100,000 miles now. This is what all the boots look like when they are new and after you install it will look closer to that. Your tie rod end, like most joints in your steering and suspension, is a ball and socket joint. You can see that this one is getting kind of tight. It looks like there might be some rust building up down into that joint or these can develop play in them, which will allow them to pop in and out or click side to side making your steering inaccurate and your alignment angles impossible to adjust causing tire wear and handling issues. If you need to replace your tie rod end, this new part from 1A Auto is going to go in direct fit just like your original equipment and fix you up right.

We're going to be replacing our old lock nut so we'll take our new one and just put a mark on one of the flats so we can count the same number of turns back on. Ours was just over 28. It's not going to matter if you're using the new one or the old one. We'll set that to about the 10:00 position, which is where mine came off. We'll count one, two, three, all the way up to 28.Now what we'll do is it was about 21 turns to get our tie rod on and again mine came off right around 9:00 or 10:00. We'll go ahead and get that going again and count 21 turns back on. Line up the stud on the end of your new tie rod end and insert it into your spindle.

Install your new nut. The new one is a 22 millimeter so we'll tighten that on with a 22 millimeter socket and ratchet. Torque the outer tie rod nut to 63 foot-pounds. Your new jam nut is 22 millimeter if you installed one, otherwise you'll use a 24 millimeter wrench and tighten it back down all the way against the tie rod end. Don't forget to grease the fitting until your boot swells, but does not break.

Reinstall your wheel and tire and get your 21 millimeter lug nuts as tight as you can by hand. Lower the partial weight of your vehicle back onto the tires. Torque your lug nuts to 110 foot-pounds in a cross pattern.

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